This is freakin' brilliant: "Chevy's 'Make Your Own Tahoe Commercial' idea not exactly going as planned".

Too funny.

(Hat tip to Huff Po...and another BRAD BLOG reader who tried to point me to these earlier, but whose name I've forgotten. With apologies.)

After being suddenly tossed off the air to make room for yet another religious station in Arizona, Air America Phoenix has found a new home and begins a new broadcast day at Midnight tonight!

They will now be heard at KPHX 1480 AM in Phoenix, or via aaphx.com on the web! Congrats folks! And welcome back! Arizona needs ya now more than ever!

And thanks to all of those BRAD BLOG readers who answered our calls for action in support of AAR Phoenix over the last month or two! It's nice to win one every now and again, huh?

But more good news for progressives in Phoenix, as the smartest man on radio, Peter B. Collins, will begin airing out there as well (on a different station, I believe) beginning the week after next. And judging by his brilliant regular Friday afternoon guest (5:20p PT), I'd say Phoenix is in for an embarrasment of Progressive riches! UPDATE: Peter B. contacts us to say he'll be on KPHX as well! His show will air on tape delay at 10p-1a Mon-Fri!

Having a problem with some users not being able to comment as being told they are "Banned". Trying to figure out and fix the problem now. Apologies for whatever reason it's occuring...Hope to have it taken care of shortly.

UPDATE: Fixed? If you had previously not been able to post a comment this morning, please try and post one here to see if we've gotten the problem fixed. If you still can't post, please let me know. Thanks!

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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In this video, Senator Lindsey Graham questions John Dean and Bruce Fein at today's Censure Hearing. Besides being argumentative and contrary, it's difficult to make much sense out of the Senator's hostility.

Steve Soto of The Left Coaster has this to say about Senator Graham's performance:

Meanwhile meanwhile... The Wingnuts have discovered they too should be concerned about hackable Electronic Voting Machines, as we find in this article posted yesterday over at RedState blog --- the site co-founded by serial plagiarist and disgraced former Washington Post blogger (for three days anyway) Ben Domenech --- concerning new ownership of Sequoia by Venezuelan firm Smartmatic.

Apparently, the writer is concerned about Electronic Voting Machines only now that he's realized Smartmatic may be owned or controlled or unduly influenced by one Hugo Chavez. He goes so far as to quote these words by another blogger in his article:

While we're glad to see the Wingnuts suddenly giving a damn about Electronic Voting --- now that they're concerned about their own ox being gored by a company which may have left-leaning ownership --- we're hardly surprised that the anonymous blogger who calls him or herself "AcademicElephant" (we'll presume it's a "he") didn't seem to have such concerns about another Voting Machine Company with "connections to the George W. Bush regime [being] selected to run elections" all over our country in 2004 during one of the most contentious elections in our country's history.

But of more concern for the moment, now that Mr. Elephant has suddenly decided to be worried about such important matters as a transparent and accountable democracy, he sadly exhibits the all-too-familiar Wingnut tendency of having a problem with that whole pesky "fact thing".

By way of example, Mr. Elephant decides right off the bat to use some of the same tired old misleading propaganda in one of his early grafs...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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UPDATE FROM BRAD: Glenn Greewald over at Crooks & Liars had a great find which he posted today in time for Feingold himself to pick up on and mention during today's hearings (video clip here). Here's the crux of Greenwald's post...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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The Christian Science Monitor reports that Jill Carroll was not aware that the first (and most replayed) video taped interview would be broadcast in Iraq or internationally. In fact Carroll may not even been certain that she was free during the interview.

This video contain several clips. CNN's Nick Robertson opens with a quick report saying that Jill Carroll was not aware that the interview would be broadcast. Next, we have included the complete raw interview footage. Finally, Miles O'Brien interviews the editor of The Christian Science Monitor for some behind-the-scenes information about Carroll's state of mind during her initial release and during that first video interview.

Jill Carroll's kidnappers simply left her at the offices of the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) in the city of Amariyah. She had not been released to American or Iraqi officials at the time of the first interview.

Carroll was told that the interview would be for 'internal' party use. The IIP owns Baghdad TV so maybe it isn't surprising that they broadcast the interview.

State Sen. Debra Bowen released a statement moments ago about yesterday's report that the new computerized California Voter Registration Database is summarily rejecting some 26% of all new or re-registering voters across the statewide. The LA Times reported yesterday that some 43% of voters in Los Angeles County alone have been dumped by the new system.

We'll have more on all of this soon. Working on a number of items at once, as well as being in full catch--up mode after being on the road for a week. So for now, here's Bowen's release in full...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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More than 30,000 Iraqis have been forced to flee from their homes after being threatened with death due to sectarian differences. This video from ABC News reports on one Iraqi family that has been forced into exile. While the video doesn't reflect the magnitude of the problem, it is one of the first reports broadcast to a large American audience.

In the ABC News video report, Professor of Mideast Studies at Sarah Lawrance College Fawaz Gerges says, "This is the beginning of the nightmare." Fawaz's experience tells him that Iraq is at the early stages of Bosnia's ethnic cleansing or Lebanon's civil war.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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MSNBC Countdown's Keith Olbermann interviews former Nixon White House Council John Dean. Dean is scheduled to testify at a Friday hearing on Feingold's Censure Resolution.

As Nixon's White House Council during Watergate, Dean testified before the Senate committee that eventually lead to Nixon's resignation. John Dean has compared President Bush to Nixon and says that Bush's warrantless wiretapping program is illegal.

The Friday hearing will be held by Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter's who strongly opposes the censure resolution. Specter withheld the names of other witness scheduled to testify.

In this interview, Dean says:

John Dean also comments on the White House Chief of Staff change and how Jack Abramoff is a threat to the Bush Administration.

Just out from AP, the Florida state Attorney General has subpoenaed the three Electronic Voting Machine companies who have all refused to do business with Leon County, FL Election Supervisor Ion Sancho since he discovered that Diebold's optical-scan voting system was vulnerable to hackers.

Sancho's discovery, revealed via a mock election test last December, showed in no uncertain terms that Diebold's systems could be hacked, the results of an election flipped, without a trace being left behind.

Since then, as The BRAD BLOG has previously reported, all three Voting Machine Vendors certified to do business in the state have all refused to sign contracts with the heroic elected official (even though sales reps from both ES&S and Sequoia had initially promised to do so).

According to AP...

At this time, it's still unknown whether the companies refusal to do business with Sancho is due to collusion on their part, or simply because ES&S and Sequoia are concerned that Sancho may actually examine their machines with the same rigor previously applied to Diebold's machines. Sancho, though we've asked him on several occassions (one of those occasions was live on The Young Turks radio show, the MP3 of that interview is here) refuses to speculate.

The now infamous "hack test" has had repurcussions around the nation, including in California where it caused the Sec. of State to momentarily pause, commission a panel of experts to analyze situation and independently confirm the gaping security hole along with finding at least 16 others, before going ahead and certifying the hackable machines in the state anyway. A group of 25 state voters recently filed a lawsuit to prevent the purchase and use of Diebold machines in the state.

In Maryland, one of Diebold's original "showcase states", the Republican Governor has called for a ban of Diebold's machines and the State House of Reps recently voted 137 to 0 to do exactly that.

For its part, the state of Florida's Sec. of State --- while recognizing the problem exposed by Sancho and warning all state Elections Officials about the matter --- has nonetheless attacked and threatened the elected Sancho with removal from office if he's unable to strike a deal with one of the vendors certified to do business in the state. That, despite wide support from around the country, and in his own county of Leon which is home to the state's capitol of Tallahassee --- otherwise known as JebVille.

UPDATE 8:09pm PT: Looks like the heat from the AG, coupled with Sancho's previous threat of legal action for breach of contract against Diebold are causing some movement. According to Tallahassee Democrat tonight:

Whether that's a good or bad thing, we'll leave to someone else to determine. But, never a dull moment.

UPDATE 3/30/06: Jim March of BBV posts the actual subpoenas and interrogatory questions sent to all three companies by the AG. Looks like he means business and seems to be building a case for collusion and anti-trust violations amongst the companies. (Hat-tip to commenter "Catherine A")

We've been dreading this. And you're not gonna like it either.

It's an entirely new can of worms in the Electronic Rape of American Electoral Democracy. The next wave --- beyond the electronic voting machines, and perhaps even more alarming --- in the arsenal of those out to game the system for partisan advantage.

No matter what we do, no matter how many successes, the Bad Guys --- those who hate Democracy and American Values --- are always one step ahead of us, it seems.

The horrifically written and, of course, ironically named "Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002" requires, as of January 1, 2006, each state to implement "a single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list."

And guess who's writing the software for it, in California, Ohio and elsewhere? That's right...our old friends at Diebold, Inc.

While we've put off reporting on much of this until now --- as prompted by story out today (in the MSM of all places!) --- we've been working on an extremely disturbing part of this story for some time relating directly to all of this out in, you guessed it, Ohio. We've yet to run the story for a number of reasons. But we hope to have much more on it, in all its troubling detail, in the not-too-distant future.

For today, however, we'll stick to the report coming out of California in this morning's Los Angeles Times which says that, since the first of year, when California's new computerized Voter Registration Database has gone state-wide, Los Angeles County has "rejected 14,629 people --- 43% of those who registered from Jan. 1 to March 15."

The rejections occur, amongst other reasons, due to failures of exact matching between voter applications and the state's motor vehicle registration (DMV) database to which they are now auto-magically compared. So, if a voter registers (or re-registers after moving to a new location) as "Brad Friedman" but has "Bradley Friedman" on his driver's license, he'll be auto-kicked out of the voter registration system and may not find out until he shows up at the polls on Election Day! That is, if he even knows where to show up since he may no longer receive sample ballots and poll location information etc. in the mail!...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart pokes fun at Bush's White House 'shake up' and exposes more ridicules Bush Administration deceptions in the process.

Stewart is not impressed with Bush's pick for Chief of Staff:

Blogged by Brad on the road...

"Primary voting-machine troubles raise concerns for '06" is the headline on the front page of today's USA Today. The article even quotes regular BRAD BLOG Guest blogger John Gideon of VotersUnite.org.

Here's their lede...

The article is mostly stuff that regular BRAD BLOG readers are likely familiar with while the MSM is still busy playing catch-up on these matters. (Who could have forseen such troubles, after all?)

The Voting Machine Industry and Elections Officials, are, in general, still in denial mode --- blaming "human error" for the "glitches". That too will change over time as the MSM realizes they're being sold a bill of good when they report such things within that phony framework.

The story covers briefly, USA Today-style, the many troubles in the IL primaries (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here), including the 400+ missing Sequoia Memory Cards in IL (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here), the 100,000 extra votes added by Hart InterCivic and ES&S machines in Tarrant County, TX (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here and here), the TX Sec. of State's shutdown of a recount in Tom Green County, TX (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here) and the former Conservative Republican (they don't mention that part) Supreme Court Justice preparing to challenge the election in TX (previously covered by BRAD BLOG here --- with more to come very shortly on this, btw!)

From the 2 states to have disastrous primaries so far, USA Today also looks forward to the 48 more still ahead of us, noting that "10 states hold primaries in May, including Pennsylvania, which is scrambling to train voters and poll workers."

And our man Gideon, ever the eternal pessimist (can't image why) is then quoted as follows:

No worries. Plenty of Election Officials and Voting Machine Vendor spokesfolks are quoted in more detail to let us know that everything is perfectly under control.